Sahim Alwan

Sahim Alwan (1973-) was a member of the Lackawanna Six cell of al-Qaeda.

Biography
Sahim Alwan was born in 1973 in Buffalo, New York, the son of a steelworker. Alwan wore a suit and tie every day of his adult life, studying criminal justice at the local community college, and he was assaulted in 1991 outside of a restaurant in a racist attack by some white Americans during the Gulf War. In the late 1990s, he worked for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and helped the FBI with a fraud case, considering working for them. He later married and had three children, and he worked at the Iroquois Job Corps Center to help troubled youth in finding employment. He later became president of the local mosque, and he was hungry to learn more about Islam, although he was already knowledgeable. Later, however, he became curious and decided to head to Afghanistan, and he was the first American to attend an al-Qaeda training camp there. Alwan had an interview with Osama bin Laden himself, but he decided to leave the al-Farouq camp when he was trained to kill other Muslims rather than to protect them. On 13 September 2002, he was arrested, and in December 2003 he was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison for conspiracy to aid terrorism.